There's something about the way that Microsoft conducts itself with the Xbox Live Arcade that drives people absolutely bonkers waiting for a game. Maybe it's the lack of firm release dates and schedules like conventional gaming, or maybe it's just some sort of Pavlovian response to it being a Wednesday...regardless of the cause, Arcade acolytes work themselves into quite a lather waiting for titles only hinted at in previews. With the exception perhaps of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, no single title has drawn such vociferous vocalisations than Team 17's invertebrate invader classic, Worms.

The Worms series is a long and venerable franchise that, while making the occasional sortie into the enemy territory of console gaming, has always made camp in the PC territory. Despite this however, the game seemed like a perfect fit for the Xbox Live Arcade platform with its quick-action feel and simplicity of concept, and it wasn't long before a version was announced for Microsoft's fledgling service. Many, many months later, the game is finally here and the good news is that the game is every bit as good as people had hoped for, even if it does have some shortcomings.

On the off-chance that you weren't playing with your Worm(s) during the early 90s, the game is essentially a very successful, tongue-in-cheek reinvention of the old PC classic, Scorched Earth. The premise is deceptively simple: take a squad of weapon-toting worms, place them on a 2D side-on battlefield, add another team, and then take turns blasting the crap out of each other with an increasingly silly series of weapons. Where the original Scorched Earth simply gave you static tanks and the skill came from gauging angles, trajectories and wind-speed, Worms livens the whole things up by giving you a fixed time-limit per turn. This allows for a lot more strategy; you can move your warrior-worms into position, set up traps, take pot-shots and then scurry back into cover.

What makes it all so great is the turn-based nature of the game. The satisfaction of setting up the demise of your enemy's worms is only trumped by the pleasure of exacting revenge the following turn when someone has done you an injustice. Rivalries and alliances are forged and broken with each round, and blood oaths and dire vendettas are sworn when your favourite phylum annelida is brutally slaughtered. Of course, none of this is anywhere near as much fun in singleplayer as it is in multiplayer, but Team 17 have seen fit to include a wealth of solo options for those whose worm-play is a solitary affair. There are 20 singleplayer challenges, tutorials and a skirmish mode to keep you going at it alone in the dark or during those equally grim times that Xbox Live is offline for maintenance.

But anyone who knows Worms will know that multiplayer is really where the fun is at, and sadly, it's the patchiest part of the Live Arcade experience for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the now-defunct Xbox Live Arcade size-limit of 50MB severely hampered the amount of content that the game could deliver out of the gate, meaning the range of backgrounds, scenery and voice-packs is fairly limited. Secondly – and perhaps more importantly for Worms fanatics – Team 17 made a very conscious effort to provide what they believed to be the best weapon set to suit the Arcade experience. Of course, when it comes to Worms-weaponry, there is no way in hell they could please everyone, but a lot of well-known favourites like the Holy Hand Grenade and super-sheep are notably absent.

Naturally, the downloadable-content-friendly nature of the Live Arcade means it's entirely possible that we'll see new backdrops, objects, voice-packs and even weapons, but the additional cost is no doubt going to be a sore point for some gamers. But viewed objectively, the included weapons are a pretty solid blend of useful and powerful without being overly unbalancing, and they reward strategy and skill for the most part. Your basic ballistic backup is the trusty bazooka, but there's a bunch of real world(ish) weapons like shotguns, machineguns and even air-strikes to choose from.

Of course it wouldn't be worms without the outlandish offerings like exploding sheep, banana-bombs, teleportation devices and Streetfighter-style dragon punches and fireballs. Particularly powerful products are limited not only in quantity but also in the rapidity in which they can be deployed – air-strikes aren't usable until the third round, for example. Some of the abilities do lend themselves to cheap-play...using the blowtorch to burrow into a cliff and then barricading the worm in with a blowtorch is a lamer favourite on Live, and it's quite effective in the singleplayer challenges too.

But the biggest problem with multiplayer by far is just how hit-and-miss it can be to play over Xbox Live. Local games seem to be totally fine, but once you go online the problems range from horrible lag, dropouts at the start or even mid-game, glitchy combat results, and even having all your team show up as a totally different squad. Given that one of the many excuses for the wayward Worms release was always QA and certification, it boggles the mind how a game can ship with quite so many glaring problems in online play.

Still, the game looks absolutely fantastic; the backdrops are crisp and vibrant, the worms look great, the framerate is solid and it supports widescreen and HD resolutions. There's a nice variety of voice-packs for the worms including English, French and German accents, and hopefully there's more to come via Downloadable Content. The in-game Achievements are nice and attainable, but will still require a serious investment of time to unlock them all.